The Financial Lives of the Poets

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jump in with both feet and read this witty, darkly comic tale of financial, moral and marital ruin. Matt Prior is a former newspaper reporter with a mortgage in forbearance (six days until eviction), two boys at a private school,  and a wife contemplating an affair, when he encounters a couple of potheads at the 7-11 store and gets sucked into their world. Oh, and his father is senile and has to live with them. The story is interspersed with poetry, which Matt aspired to write when he quit his reporting job and started a financial poetry business, inspired as he is by stock averages and the promise of high returns. My favorite line: This meeting is as predictable as coffin shopping.

Things go from bad to worse before the end of the book, but I won't wreck the ending for you here.



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